Chapter 3: From Aleppo to the Suez
January 13, 1857: One of my favorite event chains is the one for a Discriminatory School System. The flag gives a 1% hit to Research, in return for +5% assimilation rate. However, you also will keep getting the following event that gives Research Points in return for some MIL (which will burn away) and CON (which might). The RP bonus from the event far outweighs the RP loss from the flag.
On the same day, Egypt's army appears in Alexandria, heading towards my armies that attacked out of Tobruk. I'm not particularly worried.
January 15: Persia is now in our SoI. I shift influence to Greece - I want to lock down my neighbors in my SoI for two reasons: they're easier to influence, and I don't want unruly neighbors if I get DoW'd by a great power. The downside to having Persia in my SoI is that Russia likes to attack it. In a month, they'll offer an alliance (which I'll accept).
February 1: The Egyptians close in, and decide to attack Siwa. Here, I display a tactic for drawing the AI into a battle in my favor: Siwa is a desert and has pitifully low supply limit. If I move my army there before the Egyptians arrive, I'll immediately take attrition right before the battle. That's no fun.
Instead, I time my armies to arrive 1-3 days after the Egyptians hit my brigade in Siwa. The brigade in Siwa will get hammered for a day, but then the rest of the armies will join in. If I had an available general, I could bring him in from Tobruk to cover my general-less brigade in Siwa.
I'll be slightly outnumbered (due to attrition already taken), but if I withdraw after the battle, I should be OK.
February 16: The battle of Siwa goes worse than expected. I got crappy rolls...however, they're almost out of org themselves, and can't pursue my army as it limps back to Tobruk.
March 8: More + assimilation events...
May 6: Rather than chase me into Tobruk, the Egyptians swing east and try to dislodge me out of Palestine. Instead, they learn why I kept my best troops in the front. Some chasing will wipe their army completely out - now they're down to brigades they recruit from remaining soldier pops.
June 6: See why it was stupid to ally Tunis? We wish them luck...from afar.
July 11: A newly created brigade suicides in Al Arish - the AI doesn't wait a month or two to regain any org before charging your armies. The downside is that I believe this insta-kills many of the 3000 POPs that made up the brigade.
December 4: Freedom of Trade = money! Next up: Ideological Thought. I can't turn down 50 plurality in about 2 decades (which will net me about 1.5 RP/day).
On the war front, we're just occupyin'. My infantry and cavalry have gone home in case someone gets frisky, leaving the rest to irregulars.
January 11, 1838: Texas must have won the war with Mexico, because they've applied for statehood and joined the USA.
April 3: We finally get all the cores added to our war goals, and now add the state of Dumyat. Again - I should have done Dumyat first. C'est la vie.
April 14: Ethiopia has joined the fray while I was busy killing dialog boxes...they'll end up with access to the sea after the war.
July 8: Thrace hits 2000 craftsmen in the cement factory, and has 1.3% clergy. We're slowly getting there...
September 6: One of our politicians is bonking a European, and will be sacked for it.
October 10: Maybe I should add this as a feature request: if you have a lot of war goals, it's easy to see a peace offer from the AI and not notice that it's missing one. In this case, it's missing my war goal for Dumyat. Thanks, but no.
December 8: After occupying my way down the Nile, Egypt finally relents. The main outcome of the war? We have bigger text for Ottoman Asia - a worthy war goal!